Friday Full-Length: Mos Generator, Nomads
Posted in Bootleg Theater on August 7th, 2026 by JJ KoczanReleased in 2012, this album turns 15 next year, and I’d imagine there will be some fanfare around that with a rerelease or whathaveyou, at least potentially. I thought about waiting until 2027 for it, putting it on the list and filing it away for the time being, and that made sense until I actually put Nomads (review here) on and the issue was quickly settled.
As a heavy rock fan, it’s often a privilege to see and/or hear a band figure out who they are, to discover new peaks in their approach, and to grow generally as players and songwriters. Mos Generator, the Port Ochard, Washington, three-piece founded and fronted by guitarist/vocalist Tony Reed (also keys, recording, and so on), had already been a band for 12 years at this point, and had spent time on Nasoni Records and Small Stone in addition to self-releasing their first couple outings on Music Abuse. Their signing to Ripple Music ahead of releasing the nine-song/39-minute Nomads, however, would be a pivotal moment for the band, and in these songs, Reed, bassist Scooter Haslip and drummer Shawn Johnson would find a new level of realization.
That’s not to take away from 2008’s The Late Great Planet Earth, 2007’s Songs for Future Gods or anything else they did going back to 2000’s self-titled debut (reissue review here). It’s hard to know what counts as what in a discography like Mos Generator‘s, with copious unearthed studio one-offs, splits, EPs, and between-album albums, but when Nomads hit, it was a landmark. The A-side alone is a masterclass in heavy rock songwriting, varied in tempo and structure but united in hooks, setting forth with opener “Cosmic Ark” and a swaying groove that remains heavy and friendly in kind.
Tight in delivery and flow while making it sound easy and casual, “Cosmic Ark” begins the succession through “Lonely One Kenobi” — which uses its Star Wars reference to deflect from the emotional impact of the song, catchy as it is — “Torches” and “Step Up,” the latter two which manifest the ’70s-via-’90s ethic the band always seemed to search out, sounding classic and new at the same time. The energy in Johnson‘s drumming as “Torches” shifts into its start-stop chorus and the way “Step Up” echoes this with its imploring, “You’d better find a way into the light,” before dropping the riff in the second verse only to pick it up again for the next round through are emblematic of the detail work, the craft that was put into the making of Nomads, and they demonstrate that it’s less about form or how heavy your tone can get than the varied ways you can make a song move. Like great pop, the structure is applicable 
across a range of interpretations, but they’re going to come at you one way or the other.
This is good news. Mos Generator never really took part in the riff-worship mentality that came about around this time in the 2010s; stylistically cohesive as a single sound — you’d call it ‘heavy rock and roll,’ then and now — the band nonetheless always had more going on than just whatever Reed came up with on guitar to build a song around. The A-side of Nomads is a monument to the chemistry in the band, and though the chug and Judas Priest-style tension at the outset of side B leadoff “Solar Angels” speaks to a shift in mentality for the second half of the album, the tracklisting’s centerpiece is a preface for some of the progressivism that Mos Generator would develop in their approach over the next decade-plus. I’d say the same in the depth of post-grunge melody in the subsequent “For Your Blood,” though neither song is indirect in its presentation or self-indulgent.
Crashes introduce “Can’t Get Where I Belong” as the third in this decades-flattening process, and cycles through a jabb of a riff with layered vocal harmonies from Reed in the chorus — speaking of portents; recall this is before he took part in Big Scenic Nowhere — and feels like a ramble with the complementing atmospheric flourish of guitar, but is no less on point or grounded than anything that surrounds as it moves with dexterity into the solo and the subsequent re-slowing back into the verse before the chorus finishes out. This leaves the minute-long acoustic interlude “Nomads” and seven-and-half-minute closer/longest song “This is the Gift of Nature” in something of a place of their own at the end of the record, but this works in the song’s favor as it remains as catchy as the rest of the album before it while taking more time to flesh out the other parts around that, adjusting the balance that’s been maintained so carefully across the tracks without giving it up entirely.
It’s a celebration of a riff at the start for the 90-plus seconds of the intro, the message coming through clearly of the band taking their time in a different way, but when the doubled-vocals hit to deliver the song’s title-line, there’s no question that you as the listener hearing it are coming to the finish. Another cycle through sees the chorus slow down the second time and open up as the song hits its halfway point into a slower bridge and a stop with Reed‘s vocals falling down a hole circa 4:40, taking a second or two before the bluesy noodling of the guitar begins to build back up for the bigger ending. The pace picks up back to the verse, vocals ringing out clearly, and they cap with one last go for the hook and a crash and some residual amp noise, then that’s it.
I’ll float this as a classic heavy rock record in the making, which is to say that 20 years from now it’ll probably still sound as good as it does 14 years after it first came out. The version of the record above is a reissue from 2017, so you’ll find bonus demos after the album-proper; I figured the more the merrier, but if that offends you, Ripple‘s original edition is here. There’s a lot to say about growth in Mos Generator‘s sound, the trading out of lineups, the years of touring that followed Nomads, and so on, but for today I think it’s enough just to dive back and enjoy giving this one another go, and I hope you do precisely that. Thanks for reading.
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School-choice-hell update: If the district can get all the supports in place, we’re going to go with the first new school we talked to — credit always to The Patient Mrs.’ internet research — and start with half-days for the first however long so she can get acclimated. Indeed so we all can, as I’ll be the one driving her. Good thing gas is cheap. Ha.
On Monday, The Pecan visited the other, much closer place we looked at last week or the week before for a trial day, and she liked it, but not as much as the other spot. Yes, we give a shit about her opinion in this. That will affect buy-in on her part, for sure, but also part of what we want to do is put her someplace she feels safe and comfortable, and she didn’t eat at the place Monday, where at FlexSchool — that’s what the first new place is called — she did, which is a huge sign of how it would go. I think there were too many kids, too many people in the room at the other spot, and despite it being much closer to the house — like two minutes; it’s right there — we had questions about academic rigor and ideology alike, and I’m not signing her up for a place that I’m not certain she’s 100 percent welcome in.
There’s more to do, but that there’s been any movement at all on the issue is a relief. I guess we’ll just spend the next three weeks before school starts ironing out details and getting everything squared with the district, which surely means more meetings with our caseworker and whoever else needs a meeting before the plan is put in action. We’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, both The Patient Mrs. and my Hungarian teacher are pushing me to send my email to the consolate for a citizenship appointment, and despite the fact that I don’t feel ready, I’m told I am. I wanted to do it before the end of the year. That was my goal. I need to practice answering questions and writing out my bio, etc., to meet the language requirement. I suck at listening (in English too), though, and I’m worried they’re going to say something to me in the interview and I’m not going to catch whatever pivotal word would let me know what they’re talking about and what I should be talking about and I’ll screw it up and blow the whole thing. That’s the vision I have. Yes, I recognize that as anxiety; I’m not stupid. My assertion is that it’s a rational fear, and neither The Patient Mrs. nor my Hungarian teacher know as well where I am in my studio of the language as I do. I have more to work on.
I woke up at four this morning thinking about that, about this post, about the Quarterly Review that starts on Monday, about the uncomfortable-ass mattress we moved into our bedroom a couple weeks ago from the guest bed and how I haven’t slept well since. It’s too low, it’s too hard, this this this. It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get back to sleep and I’d been tossing all night anyway, so I just got up and decided to get to work. I’ll probably be nodding off by 1PM and a total bitch by six, but it’s not my night for bedtime, so at least I have that.
Been a minute since the last Zelda update, but The Pecan beat Ocarina of Time yesterday on a playthrough we did together, and it was her first time doing so, so that was fun. I told her “gg” and she gave me a high-five; a nice little moment. We bought the final battle Lego this week as well, kind of coincidentally, and she’s been putting that together and at bedtime has been reading the Twilight Princess manga, which has some violence/blood, but is still a safe way for her to experience those things through media. But anyway, I had her claw in my face a couple times this week for various perceived infractions upon her autonomy, so I’ll take those moments when I can get them.
It’s Bandcamp Friday, as the 100-plus emails I received this morning all took the time to remind me, so if you’re out shopping, enjoy. Otherwise, I hope you have a great and safe weekend and that when the Quarterly Review starts on Monday you find a bunch more awesome new music. Unless you’re a bootlicker, in which case, fuck you and fuck fascism forever. That little voice in the back of your head that knows you’re worthless is right.
FRM.
